Success Story
Customer: Maranatha Christian School
Country: Australia
Industry: Education
Maranatha Christian School is a co-educational, multi-campus school for Christian families located in the south eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
As providers of high quality education and focused on enabling each student to achieve individual excellence, they have been "leaders in Christian education" for over 40 years.
The oldest Christian school in Victoria, Maranatha is set over three campuses at Doveton, Endeavour Hills and Officer, has over 1100 students from Prep to Year 12, and more than 150 staff members.
The Challenge
In 2013, Maranatha Christian School decided it was time to explore the market for a new solution to their print and document management needs. At the time, Maranatha had a large number of small printers around the senior school and several multifunction devices (MFDs) in both junior and senior campus. In addition to this fleet they also have a dedicated print room to manage larger print jobs.
Rob Sanderson, Business Manager at Maranatha, said that their previous system was costly and fostered a large amount of wastage. They knew that more efficient and up-to-date technology was available to help them reduce waste, expenditure and provide greater access to resources for staff and students.
“We had been with another provider for many years but they were not able to provide us with the flexibility we required in terms of incorporating new methods of document management. Under our previous solution, we had far too many smaller printers around the school, which were costly to run and meant that we were spending far more than we wanted to.”
- Rob Sanderson, Business Manager
“We had been with another provider for many years but they were not able to provide us with the flexibility we required in terms of incorporating new methods of document management. Under our previous solution, we had far too many smaller printers around the school which were costly to run and meant that we were spending far more than we wanted to” said Rob.
Maranatha were looking for a provider that could help them to achieve their long term goal of moving to a more paperless, e-learning environment, which would allow students to integrate their own devices with, integration across all 3 campus sites.
“We sought a solution that would allow us to reduce printing and move to an electronic system of sharing information through a Learning Management System. We required a simple way of getting information into a digital form, which would allow staff and students to retrieve it as required,” said Rob.
Andrew Hawthorn, IT Technician at Maranatha, said that they were also looking for more user friendly devices and a way to monitor device usage, something their previous solution lacked.
“We wanted our solution to provide a way to clearly track use of devices to help us achieve our goal of incorporating some accountability for usage to reduced waste,” said Andrew.
The Toshiba Approach
Toshiba proposed a staged process, starting with the implementation of new hardware and waste reduction software to enforce printing rules, such as default double-sided printing. This would allow for a more economical solution, even in the short term, with the progressive elimination of small, high cost units, redirecting printing to more cost effective MFDs.
“Find me” printing has also been incorporated where staff and students log into a device to release their print job. This functionality helps to reduce waste through the auto-deletion of print jobs that are not collected.
“We are looking to roll out a swipe card system to release printing. However, we want these cards to have various functions throughout the school, so it will require a coordinated effort to provide a fully integrated swipe card solution, and the Toshiba solution will provide this” said Rob.
“Toshiba showed that they understood our long term vision. They saw us as a distinctive client and offered us the greatest flexibility, allowing us to continually review our solution along the way and make any improvements necessary,”
- Rob Sanderson, Business Manager
Maranatha now also have on-site software that can provide comprehensive reporting on device utilisation throughout the school.
The next phase of the roll out will focus on integrating the e-learning system through Toshiba Capture and Store software. This will allow staff to scan documents to online folders for students to access rather than printing it for them. Staff and students can now scan hard copy originals to editable formats like Microsoft word and share the documents without the need for printed material. Staff can now also scan documents to any destination across all 3 Maranatha campus sites.
“Toshiba could provide us with the most dynamic software solution functionality to achieve our aims with the paperless Learning Management System,” said Rob.
Toshiba Managed Service (TMS) solutions allow for complete tailoring of solutions for clients working on the principle that no two client’s requirements are the same. In this way, they were completely unique in their offering to Maranatha Christian School.
“Toshiba showed that they understood our long term vision. They saw us as a distinctive client and offered us the greatest flexibility, allowing us to continually review our solution along the way and make any improvements necessary,” said Rob.
The Transition
Stage one of the solution was implemented in the January 2014 school holidays.
Implementing the first stage during school holidays helped to minimise disruption, and staff and students took the change in their stride.
Staff are realising the benefits of being able to print on any device on the network and the security that the pin-to-release provides,” said Rob.
The Results
“We have already reduced our overall ongoing costs. The Toshiba solution provides more devices at a lower monthly rate than our previous solution, through the implementation of more efficient devices and removal of the costly devices we had previously,” said Rob Sanderson.
IT Technician, Andrew Hawthorn, agreed. “We have noticed an impact on waste. The software enforced printing rules and pin-to-release are making staff think twice about printing,” he said.
Maranatha are also pleased with the new technology and progression towards their long term strategy.
“The upgrade in technology has been a major plus, we now have more user friendly devices, colour printing facilities and the technology to support our aims with the paperless Learning Management System,” said IT Technician, Andrew.
The relationship between the School and Toshiba is positive and continues to grow.
“We are satisfied with service and support we are receiving, the response times are quick and seamless. We are in constant contact with the development team at Toshiba as we continue to build on our solution, they have been very responsive”, said Andrew.
The Outlook
The Toshiba Managed Services agreement between Maranatha and Toshiba includes periodic reviews to assess the success of the solution in reaching objectives. Maranatha will sit down with their development team at Toshiba mid-year for the first review of progress and to plan for the next phase of the project. Both parties are excited as they continue to work together to realising this cutting edge solution.
“We have embarked on a journey to get to our ideal environment in terms of document management. We are looking at creating a cultural shift within the School.
Ultimately, we want our devices to be a gateway to access our online system, moving to a more paperless method for teaching and learning. We are looking forward to achieving our vision with Toshiba in the coming months,” concluded Rob.
Maranatha Christian School
104-108 Reema Boulevard
Endeavour Hills VIC 3802
Australia
Telephone (03) 9709 7200
www.maranatha.vic.edu.au
Toshiba (Australia) Pty Ltd
Building C, 12-24 Talavera Road
North Ryde NSW 2113
Australia
Telephone 1300 794 202
www.toshiba-business.com.au
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